Howard Sutton

Publisher, The Providence Journal

Providence, R.I.

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You know ever since I came in, and I came in on the business side not the journalism side of the newspaper, I’ve just been amazed every day that we start with nothing and, through magic, the presses run and out it comes every day, and it gets delivered to people’s doorsteps.

When you think of the whole business model – if you went to the Harvard Business School, and you went to visit your professor and said here’s a model for you. We’re going to get a bunch of Canadians, and we’re going to cut down these trees, and we’re going to put them in this inferno and melt it down and make newsprint, and ship it on trucks. And we’re going to ship it to these huge manufacturing companies, hire all these people to gather news, sell all this advertising, print it and then we’re going to throw it on people’s front lawn. Well, they’d say to you, “That’s like when you came to me saying FedEx would work when we have the post office.”

It’s just a miracle, every day, with newspapers though. And you get caught up in the pride and the satisfaction – from the reporters, to the pressmen, to the truck drivers and everybody who shows up here every day – 365 days a year – no matter what the weather’s like in our case – every day – since 1829 – to do it.

These are constant reminders of how great newspapers are. But it’s really more of a day in and day out product that we put out that makes me proud.